Magic Castle at Sea (and on land)

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We have always enjoyed the Magic Castle at Sea close-up performances on both Serenity & Symphony. We've collected the complimentary passes to the Magic Castle in Los Angeles for quite some time, but have not yet had an opportunity to visit the Magic Castle in Los Angeles. We will be visiting friends in Southern California later this year, so we called Magic Castle to make our reservations; there is no online reservation system, one must call the number that is on the complimentary pass. Once into their automated phone system, one of the first messages state: "if you are calling with a Crystal Cruises complimentary pass, the first available reservation is....(date given)". As of this morning, there were reservations available starting in June 2019.

This works well for us, since our visit is later in the year. I really had no idea of the popularity of the Magic Castle. So, consider this a "public service announcement", that if planning to visit Magic Castle in Los Angeles, it will require some advance planning and probably not a spur-of-the-moment decision/reservation. We're looking forward to the experience!

Rob

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We love Magic Castle at Sea and the Magic Castle in LA. We were there this past Janaury for the first time and it was absolutely fantastic. We booked it about 10-11 months out. The food was average, but then again it isnt about the food. We arrived there just about when it opened at 5pm and stayed until around 11pm, we had dinner at 8pm which was the second seating. However, it seemed that most people arrived at the same time which meant the close up magic shows from 5-7pm were pretty hard to get into as each show only accomodates 26 people, so you need to stand on line for up to 45 minutes. The next time we go we will arrive a bit later after the crowds settle in and stay later in the evening as it tends to thin out once people start going to their dinner seatings beginning at 6pm - I believe the dinner seatings are 6/8/10pm.

The week that you are set to go, you should go to the MagicCastle.com website and click on the Now Appearing tab to see the weekly program of who will performing magic and the show times so that you can plan out the evening a bit.

Also, note that there is other magic happening throughout and not just the shows listed on the program. Often times member magicians who are there on the evening will do impromtu magic over the course of the evening in the different rooms. The Castle is quite large so have a goood walk around it. There are many bars and little nooks and lots of quirky things around - an owl above one of the bars that answers yes and no questions / a telephone that should be picked up when you go past it / a piano that plays songs upon request etc.etc. Drinks can be taken everywhere, including into the shows.

It really is a special place and we will certainly make this a go to place everytime we find ourselves in LA. This is such a great but little know benefit of sailing with Crystal. Enjoy!

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It’s posts like these that have prompted me to keep our Magic Castle tickets - maybe we’ll get there next time we’re in LA next January

We met some other guests on our recent cruise who had been and they loved it - they too commented on the food noting it was not great. You’d think the Castle would lift their game on that front as it consistently seems to get bad reviews

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Is there an expiration for the tickets? I’ve been holding onto a couple of them and will have more by the end of this year. It would be a special treat to take some friends but not sure when we’ll be out there.

Can someone other than the original recipient use the tickets? Meaning can I give the tickets to friends who would go on their own?

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We will be in our first Crystal cruise next May, only a 7 day cruise. There is no mention in the PCPC of the Magic Castle offering to make reservations. How does it work? What is its cost? Thanks!

It cannot be pre-reserved in the PCPC. Tickets are first-come, first-served, are complimentary and are available in the library onboard. There is generally a notice in the first or second day's edition of Reflections that lists the number of days & times the magician will be performing on any given cruise. On Serenity, shows are held in Pulse; on Symphony they are held in the Avenue Saloon. Performances are generally scheduled late afternoon, usually between 3:30pm-5:30pm and the performance is about 20-25 minutes long. Seating is limited to about 26+/- people for each performance, so tickets often go quickly. Tickets are generally available, even on boarding day, during the library's opening hours.

Rob

Edited March 1, 2019 by ryndam

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Is there an expiration for the tickets? I’ve been holding onto a couple of them and will have more by the end of this year. It would be a special treat to take some friends but not sure when we’ll be out there.

Can someone other than the original recipient use the tickets? Meaning can I give the tickets to friends who would go on their own?

There are no expiration dates for the complimentary passes. We have given some of our passes to friends that live in LA and they have used them without any difficulty at all.

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The magic castle at sea tickets are complimentary. I suggest you go to the library on embarkation day to get your tickets. Since you're on a 7 day cruise, this will give you a better opportunity to secure a more favorable time and date.

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Also with the Magic Castle in LA, the door charge of $25(weekdays)/$35(weekends) is waived for Crystal ticket holders which is great. The only obligation is that you are required to have dinner.

Regarding the transfer of tickets, the older tickets that we hold do not have our names on them or any disclaimers so I suppose technically these can be transfered to others. The newer tickets that we hold, from around July 2018 onwards, have a space where our names and cruise numbers were written in on the ticket and below that it says “Pass not valid unless it contains the passenger and cruise number. THIS PASS CANNOT BE SOLD OR TRANSFERRED”

The last sentence was in capital letters on the ticket so I suppose they are now enforcing this, and making it super exclusive. This will also make it difficult to bring others with you. As we have quite a few tickets now including the older ones and because they dont expire, I will keep the older ones without a name on them in case we ever want to bring friends with us.

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Also with the Magic Castle in LA, the door charge of $25(weekdays)/$35(weekends) is waived for Crystal ticket holders which is great. The only obligation is that you are required to have dinner.

Regarding the transfer of tickets, the older tickets that we hold do not have our names on them or any disclaimers so I suppose technically these can be transfered to others. The newer tickets that we hold, from around July 2018 onwards, have a space where our names and cruise numbers were written in on the ticket and below that it says “Pass not valid unless it contains the passenger and cruise number. THIS PASS CANNOT BE SOLD OR TRANSFERRED”

The last sentence was in capital letters on the ticket so I suppose they are now enforcing this, and making it super exclusive. This will also make it difficult to bring others with you. As we have quite a few tickets now including the older ones and because they dont expire, I will keep the older ones without a name on them in case we ever want to bring friends with us.

Glen

Glen, you are correct. I really hadn't paid attention to this change in the passes until I just read your post. We have a couple of passes from a cruise in October 2017 and every cruise taken in 2018 that have the new "non-transfer, et.al." information on it. We too have quite a few of the older passes without the qualifications on them, so I'm glad that I saved all of them. Thanks for the heads-up!